India’s banks have been scaling up investments behind new applied sciences, digital infrastructure and now even synthetic intelligence (AI) is starting to make inroads as they give the impression of being to streamline processes, improve buyer outreach and strengthen cyber safety.
Bettering productiveness aided by new expertise, coupled with the traditional attrition could also be starting to have some bearing on headcounts at main lenders.
ICICI Financial institution’s everlasting workforce lowered by 5,148 staff within the monetary yr 2026. The nation’s second largest personal sector lender had 1,24,029 everlasting staff, in as on March 31, 2026, in line with its annual report. As on March 31, 2025, the everlasting worker rely had stood at 1,29,177.
ICICI Financial institution’s whole variety of staff have additionally come down by round 6,633 to 1,24,324 in FY26, from 1,30,957 staff a yr earlier, the annual report exhibits. The lender didn’t specify the explanations behind this decline. However, it mentions that the worker base contains gross sales executives, staff on fixed-term contracts and interns.
ICICI Financial institution shouldn’t be alone. At its bigger rival HDFC Financial institution, the workforce lowered by 3,343 staff to 2,11,178 staff on the finish of FY26, in contrast with 2,14,521 staff a yr earlier. Its non-supervisory workers energy declined by over 8,000 staff to 1,62,797 from 1,70,950. However, its workforce elevated throughout junior, center and senior administration ranges.
Axis Financial institution, the third largest personal sector lender reported whole worker rely of over 1.01 lakh within the monetary yr ended March 2026 in its annual report, in contrast with 1,04,453 within the earlier yr ended March 2025.
New expertise alone is probably not the rationale behind the decline in jobs at banks. The conventional attrition that occurs yearly may additionally be at play right here. Bankers say that as productiveness will increase with new expertise, a number of the positions is probably not essentially crammed again.
“We have now an attrition of about 18-20%. As we get extra productive and environment friendly, we simply don’t backfill the attrition. So, there isn’t a layoff occurring right here,” Subrat Mohanty, govt director of Axis Financial institution, advised reporters within the post-quarterly earnings name on Saturday, July 18.
What was being seen at the moment was the continued funding that the financial institution has made in expertise when it comes to productiveness enhancements coming by means of largely and not likely AI, he stated.
HDFC Financial institution officers identified that the lender had an attrition price of round 20%, and generally there may be slightly extra time that could be wanted to fill sure positions, so it might simply be a short lived timing distinction. Additionally, generally if the attrition price is excessive, the financial institution might take a name on whether or not there was a necessity for these positions at decrease ranges.
“We can be guaranteeing that we don’t ask anybody to go, and that’s one thing that I proceed to state, and each management member continues to state, apart from non-performance,” Sasjidhar Jagdishan, the MD and CEO of HDFC Financial institution, stated within the financial institution’s first quarter earnings name.
HDFC Financial institution had stated in its annual report that the main focus was on enabling its folks to work extra productively, and with higher alignment to buyer wants, leveraging expertise. The lender can also be redeploying expertise from backend features, the place it is ready to convey technology-led efficiencies, to customer-facing roles.
A rising share of funds, onboarding, servicing, and lending is digitally enabled and supported by analytics and automation, in line with HDFC Financial institution. Rising applied sciences, together with AI-led instruments, have the potential to additional improve service high quality, effectivity and turnaround occasions, it stated.
“What we’re endeavouring is how will we use and leverage expertise and retrain a few of these folks on the back-end to maneuver to the front-end, or to expertise groups, goes to be the medium- to long-term technique,” Jagdishan stated on the decision.
AI and GenAI guarantees transformational capabilities, in line with a report by the Boston Consulting Group in 2025.
“With mature deployment, 35-40 per cent of present low-value actions will be automated. To seize this potential, banks should transfer past pilots. This implies having a transparent AI/ GenAI technique, investing in modular structure, organising governance frameworks for moral AI, and reskilling workers,” BCG stated within the report.
